Writing and reading queerly: Foucault's aesthetics of existence and queer self- making (original) (raw)
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Creative and Critical Reflexivity: Queer Writing as an Ethics of the Self
Michel Foucault advocated an ongoing assembly and disassembly of subjectivity that constituted a kind of self-bricolage; a making and re-making of subjectivity that he saw as an aesthetic struggle towards an artistic ideal. Foucault described this process as an ethics of the self. The purpose of this transformative self-bricolage is to make philosophy a " way of life ". One of the examples Foucault gave of a technique used in such an ethics of the self— implemented to produce a desired or altered/transformed subject—was reflective writing. To put it simply, for Foucault certain kinds of writing are a practice involved in the production and maintenance of the self. This can be said to be more so when that writing is informed or organised by a philosophy of some kind that is applied as a way of life. This paper explores the ways that writing informed by Queer Theory can be used as a technique in a Foucauldian ethics of the self. The paper further argues that Creative Writing is an appropriate site for 'ethical interventions' into subjectivity and for explorations into how philosophy, in this case Queer Theory, can be applied as a way of life in which new forms of subjectivity are explored and produced.
Creative Writing Praxis as Queer Becoming
This paper examines how writing practice and engagement with textual artefacts (literature) can trigger an ongoing queer becoming. The paper discusses how the queer subject and subjectivity are constructed in the production and reception of queer texts. In other words, it explores how queer subjects are constituted by the processes and practices of reading and writing. Michel Foucault advocated an ongoing assembly and disassembly of subjectivity that constituted a kind of selfbricolage; a making and re-making of subjectivity that he saw as an aesthetic struggle towards an artistic ideal. Foucault described this process as an ethics of the self. An ethics of the self, or self-bricolage through writing, is a practice that has the potential to inform and alter the way subjects actively constitute themselves. Furthermore, creative and critical texts arising out of a queered aesthetics of existence can act as ‘models’ that strongly influence the ongoing becoming, and ethical refinement, of queer subjectivities.
Queer Theory and Foucault's" Self'as Reflexive Activity
2005
By developing a Foucauldian understanding of the self, queer theorists may remodel conceptions of selfhood such that forms of questioning identity, the body, coalitions, and recognition, which have presently arrived at an impasse, are opened to new lines of analysis. Foucault's use of "self' seems to reintroduce a model of selfhood that appears transhistorical, universal, disembodied, autopoietic, and associated with interioritya model of selfhood Foucault would likely attempt to transgress. However, against several critics, this thesis argues that while the self appears problematic in Foucault's writings, his analysis of ethics may be less problematically read. "Self' functions in these works to denote embodied, reflexive actions, which are both socially mediated and practiced. As such, the model of the self which Foucault establishes eludes the various traps laid out above, and opens a new path for confronting some key problems facing queer theory today.
The Bible and Critical Theory, 2012
When writing, sometimes the hardest thing is the beginning, and that is a problem I face writing a review of Lynne Huffer's book, Mad for Foucault. Quite simply I want to lavish it with praise, but it is probably not good to start out that way. What could I possibly say, then, at the end? But praise it I must. I believe this is probably the most important work, written in English at least, addressing queer theory for a very long time. It deserves to be read widely not only by people working in the fields of queer theory and LGBT studies but also by feminist theorists and those working in gender studies more generally. As the subtitle indicates, Huffer is rethinking the foundations of queer theory, foundations which lie both in Foucault and feminist thought, though they are often assumed to be, if not in opposition, at least in some sort of disharmony. Huffer shows how much of that supposed disharmony might actually be based on false assumptions on all sides. Furthermore, Huffer's might be one of the best explorations of Foucault as theorist and (anti-)philosopher. She confesses to reading Foucault "with love" (p. ix), a love awoken, aroused by her encounter with the Foucault of the archives in 2006. Reading with love means that she also writes with love rendered in a delightful prose.
Remembering Foucault: Queer Theory and Disciplinary Power
Sexualities, 2010
Popular post-structural approaches to gender and sexuality take it as axiomatic that disciplinary power constitutes subjectivities, if imperfectly, in an insidious process of domination and social control. While rejecting a project of liberation grounded in the simplistic premise of freedom from power, these formulations nevertheless propose an implicit emancipatory project anchored in the notion that identity discourse is a problem to overcome. In this article I use the sexual and gendered self in the sociological literature as a vehicle to explore more carefully the problem of disciplinary power. My discussion takes two directions. First, I argue that taxonomic discourse may, in some instances, expand upon subjectivities, opening up and empowering, rather than narrowing and setting in stone, the possibilities of self. And second, I argue that late modernity provides the conditions under which some individuals gain reflexive distance from their subject positions to a degree perhaps unparalleled in history. In this context and for these individuals, the multiplicity of available discourses and their often contradictory content come to resemble more a menu of sensitizing options than a regime of social control. Ultimately, I argue that these two observations are not anathema to Foucault's own research but, are in fact, suggested in his thesis wherein discourse was theorized to establish the limits of self and, under certain conditions, new pathways for selfdevelopment. I argue that this more complex conception of disciplinary power is not only more effective in capturing the effects of power but also has the potential to open up important lines of inquiry regarding the sociohistorical conditions that mediate power and its effects.
Writing with Foucault: openings to transformational knowledge practices in and beyond the classroom
Critical Studies on Security, 2022
This article engages questions of authority and authorship in the discipline and the IR classroom, driven by a search for affirmative horizons within critical scholarship and academic practice. Prompted by a series of 'failures' attached to the social and disciplinary performance of 'expertise' in the context of violent conflict, I explore the practice of writing as it unfolds from Michel Foucault's lesser cited essays and interviews as a generative, creative resource. I follow Foucault in breaking down the normalised perceptions of the 'author function,' revealing writing as an act that diagnoses, discovers, and potentially transforms writer, reader and the social structures that the writing addresses. Foucault's experimental ethos brings to light the complex life worlds of sense-making through the vehicle of writing. It also invites us to embrace the transgenerational heritage that quietly structures our relationships to knowledge together with the multiple selves that arise and are co-present in the text. I enter such processes of negotiation and transgression in Foucault's work and my own writing through a series of vignettes, which aim to actualise the 'method' these gestures may harbour for making 'uncommon sense' and re-inhabiting research and pedagogical practice as continuous, selfreflexive and self-authori(zi)ng journeys.
The Queer Art of Writing: (Re)Imagining Scholarship and Pedagogy Through Transgenre Composing
OhioLINK, 2019
While digital composing is a pertinent topic in recent and current research, there are few resources in rhetoric and composition that discuss the intersections of art and writing. “Transgenre” composing refers to work that crosses the boundaries of traditional genres and, specifically, this project focuses on transgenre work that contains both elements of art/image and text/writing. This research project uses arts-based and queer methodologies to examine transgenre composing and the ways it can help scholars and teachers rethink their composing practices and pedagogical approaches to writing. Traditionally, the print, alphabetic document has been privileged and valued in academic settings over other composing forms, but arts-based and queer approaches provide lenses through which to (re)examine these traditional academic practices and (re)imagine them so that unnecessary barriers and over-simplified binaries are broken down. This project also utilizes textual analysis, interviews (from authors who have published transgenre compositions), and collage as methods and open coding and reflection as data analysis tools. In employing these methods and methodologies, this project works to (re)imagine traditional academic norms, advocate for the use of art in writing, and promote creative-critical scholarship for artists, writers, scholars, and teachers of writing.
Mad for Foucault: Rethinking the Foundations of Queer Theory
2009
Preface: Why We Need Madness Acknowledgments Introduction: Mad for Foucault 1. How We Became Queer First Interlude: Nietzsche's Dreadful Attendant 2. Queer Moralities Second Interlude: Wet Dreams 3. Unraveling the Queer Psyche Third Interlude: Of Meteors and Madness 4. A Queer Nephew Fourth Interlude: A Shameful Lyricism 5. A Political Ethic of Eros Postlude: A Fool's Laughter Notes Works Cited Index
Michel Foucault and sexualities and genders in education: friendship as Ascesis
Journal of LGBT Youth
Midway through this collection of essays, editor David Carlson queers a notably divisive essay from 1970 by the once lauded and equally derided essayist Joseph Epstein. As Carlson points out, Epstein's essay is a 'scathing invective of homosexuality' (p. 92). But it is this moment in the collection that serves as a crucial, semiotic hinge. After reviewing various descriptors of homosexual life, Epstein lists his taxonomy of the homosexual, offering granulated divisions of gay identity. Each is a reductive stereotype, and, as Carlson points out 'negative, harmful, racist, and hurtful' (p. 92). Yet Carlson's sees around the reduction of queer life, considering the congregation of identities not as static, but as malleable positionalities available within queer possibility. Carlson disrupts Epstein's heterointepretative gaze to reveal the 'potential for polyhedronic relationships' (p. 93). By queering Epstein, Carlson takes on the bully in the school yard, not through a counter attack, but an agile shift of the camera's focus. This queer move seems an apt frame for the collection, which aims to question, disrupt, and move beyond normative relations. As such, the collection offers engaging points of entry to Foucault's notion of ascesis, work of continual self-transformation as a counterforce for heteronormative practices-a topic that may easily frame educational scholarship on academic environments. Co-edited by David Carlson and Nelson Rodriguez, this collection continues the ongoing series Queer Studies & Education, published by Palgrave Macmillan, that includes volumes on queer epistemologies, gender and sexuality, new materialism, bodies, space, literacy and numeracy, GSAs, outreach, and equity. This collection by Carlson and Rodriguez continues the tradition of lengthier works by educational scholars working generally with Foucault's ideas in anthologies (